The Hidden Cost of Promoting Your Best Technician

Co-ops often promote their best technicians into leadership because they’re dependable, respected, and know the work better than anyone. It feels like the safest choice—and sometimes it is. But it also comes with a hidden cost that many organizations don’t recognize until the transition gets hard.

What’s really happening in that promotion

A leadership role is a different job, not a bigger version of the same job. Technical expertise can earn trust, but leadership requires additional strengths: communication, emotional maturity, decision-making clarity, conflict management, and the ability to develop other people.

When a strong technician is promoted without the right leadership development around them, two things can happen at once:

• the co-op loses a key technical contributor

• the new supervisor feels pressure to “prove themselves” while navigating people challenges they’ve never been trained for

Why it matters

The early months of a new supervisor’s experience can shape team culture for years. If that leader defaults to fixing instead of leading, rescuing instead of coaching, or avoiding hard conversations to keep peace, the team begins to drift into inconsistency.

This isn’t because they’re a bad person. It’s because they’ve been promoted into a role where success is measured differently.

What a healthier outcome looks like

When co-ops treat that transition as a leadership shift—not just a promotion—they protect performance, preserve culture, and strengthen retention. People stay where leadership is stable, expectations are clear, and growth is supported.

Promoting from within is a strength. Developing the leader after the promotion is what makes it sustainable.